"Normative definitions of masculinity[...]face the problem that not many men actually meet the normative standards[: ...]the difference between the men who cheer football matches on TV and those [playing]. But there is something more[...]carefully crafted[.... M]any men who draw the patriarchal dividend also respect their wives and mothers, are never violent towards women, do their[...]share of the housework[...], and can easily convince themselves that feminists must be bra-burning extremists."

I've posted this once on my Xanga and once on Facebook before (largely because I really like the quote). While my brother and I were watching a football game a few days ago, I mentioned the quote to him and that it was nearly impossible for me not to notice this fact anymore whenever I watched anything related to football (or probably sports in general, for that matter).

He nodded before noting, "The thing that I've noticed is that ideals exist for both men and women: it's just that women – at all times – are expected to follow, and are enforced to, the ideal; men usually just have to support it."

I guess I knew it'd come, someday. I just never could figure out what I'd do once the day came.

I'll start with what we're all thinking: creating a social network you have to pay for will never fly. It's really a reasonable price – $48 for a full year comes to $3.75 per month. While I normally avoid paying anything ever – if I can help it – (particularly because a bunch of services for the low price of only $3 per month eventually build up if you don't keep track – and, at so low a price, you're likely tempted not to be too concerned), I might actually make an exception for Xanga. But I couldn't right now. I have far greater requirements that couldn't allow any justification at this moment.

But even if I was willing to put down $48 per year, many others wouldn't (particular when social sites like Tumblr are right around the corner for free).

What would be, in my mind, the wiser decision is to revamp the way Xanga works in order to attract more people (something that Xanga, really, ought to've done a long damn time ago).

Here's what I (and, I think, a lot of other Xangans) like about Xanga: the community. And, as I've a million times before on here (and, I've been reminded this year, there are still some of us here…), it was a safe place for those who maybe wanted to talk about aspects of our lives that maybe we didn't feel comfortable about elsewhere.

I don't think those two things are separate. I could talk about depression and SI and ED and other mental disorders and histories of abuse and prejudice at Tumblr or at LiveJournal just as easily (and people have). The difference with Xanga, however, was that the community gave us a place to find others like ourselves (or exercise our desire to yell at, and complain about, others).

The problem is this very unique aspect of Xanga (its community) is not greatly highlighted. Take away the community and what do you got? Any regular run of the mill blog or Blogspot/Blogger.

The strength of Blogger, however, is that it can be used for other things. I used a Blogspot URL for the News section of the Mucho Macho Moocow Military Marching Band's site. While I could probably contort a xanga site into a similar purpose, Blogger is simply set up for strict blogging. It makes complete sense and (the greatest reason I did it) provides a very straightforward layout for those who may not be as HTML or CSS savvy to update the site. And the site itself only provides the ability to provide comments, thus directing all comments to be about the content.

Xanga, on the other hand, is a blogging site set up to facilitate communication between users who blog. The eProps, the Minis you can give people – it's all directed towards you interacting with the user rather than interacting with the content of the site. Blogger, on the other hand, has been able to act seemlessly as an extention of sites or as a site itself or as blogging if you don't mind others not interacting with you or if you don't mind the interaction tending more towards the contact than necessarily the blogger.

I once commented to one of my cousins that Facebook was, really, this unique player in the social network pools because you weren't behind a username. Using Xanga as my source of empirical knowledge, I found that I could never imagine getting rid of my Facebook because so many memories were stuck there. This was the space I traded band jokes back and forth with Kristi, where I had note upon note detailing info. about myself and, in turn, learning about my friends, where I had picture upon picture of memories and events, etc. On the other hand, what happens if I junk my Xanga? I can archive it, if I want to keep the memories, and I'm no worse for wear. Ever had a friend drop off of Facebook? Old jokes and comments suddenly are half completely, pictures you may have been tagged in that were important to you are gone.

While there is the hole in my hypothesis of the fact that I've seen an amount of people drop out of Facebook (though some do come back) that has surprised me, I think the reason Facebook has been able to repeatedly change the layout so that it gets worse and worse and do all sorts of other things that have raised outcry from its userbase is because no one is really going to leave Facebook. At the end of the day, it's where not only their photos and videos and notes are – it's where their group of friends in real life are who've commented and liked their stuff. Even if you could archive all the info., you lose that communal interaction that is just as much a part of the user experience. Further, – because it's your actual face, name, etc. there – it's an extension of your life. I go onto to Facebook to get in touch with people or ask them questions or plan things. It's your contact book, E-mail, and IM with practical application – no usernames to separate us from reality.

MySpace was purely fueled by social value. It was one of the first social network sites to hit the scene; everyone had one. Ever had a MySpace? First time I actually bothered to get one, I couldn't figure out why people were raving about them. I literally couldn't do anything with it other than change my mood and upload pictures. Could anyone really comment on said pictures? Not really; the site wasn't directed towards that. There was a blogging function but, like the pictures, it was tucked off to the side and had limited capability. The real interaction was on the main page (as with all sites) and what was presented there was a profile picture, your status, and quotes and shit you uploaded that others couldn't really interact with. Was anyone really surprised that MySpace became a major stalk-fest? It was set up that way and directed to that outcome. That's why, once the appeal and social status of it wore off, it tanked and no attempt to revive it has worked.

And then we've got Tumblr. Tumblr is this little cluster-fuck of poor organization when it comes to the long-form. This is the largest reason I have never, in spite of the allure, jumped ship from Xanga to Tumblr. Designed as a quick way to share images and short bits of information, there's no real way to form the same type of community interactions and connections that Xanga has and nurtures. Want to comment? Okay, let's just toss it into the mass of text listing who liked the post. Want to do a post longer than three sentences? HA. Let's see if you can make sense of the three or more columns going on on this person's site. Oh, and some of them trail off after the fifth sentence and you have to click through to see the rest. So useful for the passerby or anyone reading a tumblr outside of being logged into Tumblr.

Which isn't to say that last bit can't be arranged. I believe you could set up a tumblr is some reasonable fashion for regular blogging. But the thing is that Tumblr is set up, from default, to be a site aimed at hosting media and being able to offer quick little comments about said images and videos. Which is somewhat silly, really, since posting a single image could easily help determine the length of posts; the real determiner of whether it's a media blog or not ought to be in how you organize how the posts are shown (one column or 1 million columns, etc.); of course, this doesn't address Tumblr's joy at presenting feedback in an unreadable manner that makes the depressed kid almost find the last needed reason to finally hang himself.

But that's also been Tumblr's greatest strength. I want to avoid making generalities about things I'm not entirely certain about (and I've done that somewhat enough already with some of these sites I've only used sparingly) but it was really the perfect solution to a generation that was getting used to faster and faster means of doing things. Tumblr has amazing user experience.

You see, Tumblr is near unreadable to those who may be on the outside. Want to follow a discussion? Good fucking luck. However, from the signed-in Tumblr user's perspective, that's easy. It's all on your dash. On your dash, you can easily keep track of new posts from the tumblrs you follow, easily see who commented towards you or shared something you posted, etc.

Want to post an image? A quote? A post? Easy. It's right in your home page with a beautiful graphical button right there waiting for you. Quick, fast, painless, and easy. Did I mention fast? From the user perspective, Tumblr is this quick and beautiful social network site that allows you to post stuff easily and allows you interact with people. You can follow your favorite tumblrs (and, I imagine, message them) and get to know these people. Ever seen those posts about those crazy tumblrs who stay up until 3 A. M.? Tumblr's been pretty great about having a very opening and welcoming Queer community. Feminism thrives. Hell, a good deal of the images I've posted here and a few of the posts regarding Queerness and Feminism have come from or been inspired by users on Tumblr. Community! You could define a Tumblr community.

But let's say that you want to have an actual conversation outside of messaging a user? Sure, you can respond to how a user acts by commenting them or unsubbing them. But the second you comment to a person, you fork the conversation. Tumblr treats comments by pasting it on your site (with a quote of what you're responding to) and plopping a little note at the bottom of the post you respond to. So say I'm discussing something with someone. Someone else responds to my fifth comment to Person A. Does Person A see what Person B said to me? Can they easily track it? Nope; you've got a brand new conversation, is what you have. Tracking conversations on Trumblr is hyperlink jumping "fun".

Tumblr responses drives a user to your tumblr. Anyone looking at Tumblr is fine so long as you're signed in (and, even then, it's really all about who you've decided to keep track of and follow and who responds to you). Tumblr usage literally revolves around you.

Xanga, on the other hand, regulates non-message conversations to one page – the page of the subject you are discussing. That is the key to the reason why Xanga, in spite of it's (really serious) dip in popularity, has maintained a very close-knit community. Xanga forces you to have to actually interact with the people around you beyond just the material they post. I would also argue that's why Xanga has one of the most hostile communities I've ever seen on a social network site. It's a fallout of actually having to deal with people. On Tumblr, you can ignore the response in your dash if you don't want to deal with it. On Xanga, that person is on the page you were commenting on; you can stop commenting on that post but you have to deal with them otherwise.

I think the fact that Xanga is a long-form blogging site helps as well. You can better explore ideas and concepts over long lengths of text than you can over short little posts. There's more to respond to as well, in that way.

Which isn't to say that Tumblr is entirely bad (despite my own biased frustrations with it). From an inginuity standpoint, Tumblr gets up there with Facebook, for me. It changed the way we use social network sites. There's something nice (and connecting) about constantly quoting your fellow bloggers. And posting is made so much simpler.

So the basic point is this: Xanga will die or live on in its own gated community if it decides to stop being free. The alternative (and I don't know if this is necessarily feasible) is to revamp itself so that it can pull more people in. Between a premium option (maybe, as much as my cheap ass hates to admit, without the option of credits so that you're forced to spend money) and advertisements, a popular and well-used Xanga should be able to turn a profit.

The first means of doing that is truly make it feel like an interlocked community. I want to feel, once I enter, like I am literally *in* a place where, from within its halls, I can do whatever I want. Facebook has this appeal and so does Tumblr. A dash can give that feel. Changing up the private page was *definitely* a wise move. While there's always the risk of being called out for copying (though Facebook and Google+ seem to be playing a game of tag of that), streamlining what you can post (text, quote, image, video, etc.) like Tumblr does could help make it feel like getting stuff done is quicker and simpler.

One of the things that made Xanga unique from the beginning was the complete customability it had in its themes. While the level of freedom has gotten Xanga in trouble in the past, having a manual way of mucking around in the plain code of your theme while keeping the remix theme wizard would be great. The fact that themes have been important, I think, is evident from the fact that it made it into the Xanga Fundraiser post. We've long been sour since losing that level of customability (though the remix theme thing is really rather impressive and detailed). What would be really nice is a theme "store" (except without any charge), like an app store or Google Chrome's plug-in "store". People could share themes they've made and other users could select them and mess around with them. This would make it really easy for new users to get into the spirit of a nice looking site, allow for theme-makers to advertise their site, and give the interconnected feeling that app stores give (tapping into experiences others might have had with app stores and plug-in repositories).

The same could go the plug-in idea, which I think is a fantastic idea. The Widget idea would have been fine, if a remote amount of JavaScript and regular HTML/CSS worked nicely in them.

Also, security. I think, if Xanga got security measures on par with Facebook, there would be a huge surge in attendants here. it would fit in perfectly with the use of the site as a personal place to post information about yourself that you might not want others (or particular users) to see.

Another buisness to take case of: get that Xanga app working. That's further advertisement and, the more you act like a social network and reach into every other network device, the more Xanga will seem like a modern social network site and be used.

And, of course, some advertising might help. Maybe some on YouTube and general Google advertisements to bring our existence back into the general populace's awareness.

That also means deciding whether we want to integrate the images and audio hosting into the use of the site more or leave them to the side like they currently are. I think the blogging aspect (and, in turn, the community interaction) are strong enough sellers that they could be fine as they are. It's just that it's awkward and you don't want to give a user that lingering feeling.

With the notion of having to pay for your site gone, the fundraiser should be pursued strongly with an emphasis that you can donate what you can. While I know a lot of people are going to be turned off by the notion of putting down 48 (or more) dollars, I think there are many who would be okay with putting down 5 dollars or less for the social network they've grown to love and call home (as well as those willing to give much more than that as well).

We say we're a community so let's prove that. I know there are graphic designers out there amongst us. I know there must be coders. And there has to be those willing to sit down and figure out how to code an iPhone app to get their beloved site alive. I have experience with doing design; maybe not enough for Xanga to hire me on their payroll but enough for a dying site to come to me for free work. Besides, you could give every person who worked on redesigning the site premium accounts, if saving the site isn't reward enough.

My point is, I know we're willing to band together and do what we can to save this site. I never really realized how much this site had become a community to me until I realized it was going to be gone; I'd talked about it and reasoned it but didn't realize I felt it. There is a real community here with real interactions and real connections. It's not just our sites and data that's being taken down – it's the people that's being taken away as well.

So let's get everyone giving what money they can towards saving this site while we alter Xanga so that it becomes a social site that'll keep users, whether that's graphic designs or coding services given for free because we don't want to lose this site. And, at the very least, try to keep open an avenue to sell it to someone else if saving it becomes an impossibility.

Xanga's my home, in ways I've never expected. And I don't know what to do if it leaves. There is no other social networking site that I'm aware of that offers what Xanga does. There are people I don't want to lose contact with. There are people who are safe here in ways that other places just can't offer. And we're not going to be able to just move the community to another site (or, at least, easily).

We want to stay.

Reblogged from msjosephinemarch:

Abby Wambach for the ESPN Body Issue.

I love these photos. I love these photos because it’s the first time I can think of when I haven’t had to see a female athlete be overly sexualized and objectified. She’s naked, yes that’s the point of the issue (and the men are just as nude), but she’s powerful. She’s athletic and strong in both of these photos.

They just make me happy, okay?

I hate when people say they find the female body to be more delicate, graceful, or elegant than the male body. This is usually then associated with a thin waist line and curves that would necessitate a ridiculously flat stomach.

This dichotomy borders on absurdity because one of the body types I adore is a chubby gut. I like the muffin top; chubby girls are adorable. And part of why I like that body type is precisely because it isn't delicate or, necessarily, graceful. But it is one that welcomingly envelops you and is downright perfect for cuddling and snuggling.

I've said it before but I am still at a loss: why do we insist on shoving bodies into small little boxes and, in turn, contorting them into shapes that they neither have to possess nor makes any sense of improvement on them?

I cannot count (okay, maybe a slight exaggeration) the times I've seen an image of a guy that I mistook for a girl and immediately thought, "She's cute."

(case in point; I generally find it easier to just go for girls but I might just make an exception for you)

This idea that bodies can be so cleanly divided into given categories such as male and female rather than there being merely trends that aren't always obeyed is criminal not only because it denies a very real existence for some but because it is monumentally boring.

There is a wealth of diversity within the physical frame of the human body.

And that can mean flat stomachs and thin waists and that can mean prominent thighs and that can mean thinness with no curves or shape and that can mean a chubby face and that can mean plainness and that can mean a myriad of many other wonderful features that could all be appreciated for a variety of reasons.

While I would like to think I have a very large range that I appreciate, I'm certain I have my particulars. And there are others out there who appreciate aspects of the body which are different from me or maybe even similar aspects for entirely different reasons.

And that is okay and that is beautiful and that should be celebrated (if we must celebrate the human body at all; I can't help it: I'm still largely in that camp. But, if I can't convince you to such stoicism…).

Bodies are different. Bodies are varied. Bodies are complex.

And we should be encouraging that complexity rather than trying to make it derivative. Your body, down to every feature and as a total sum of their parts, is uniquely yours: no one else in the entire universe can make a claim to the same body – and that's really fucking cool.

Reblogged from gunsncigarettes:

I love everything about this photoset

The lack of condescension in cultural sharing

The nonsexualization

The contextual foreignness of firm breasts in a society that doesn’t use bras

Study debunks notion that men and women are psychologically distinct

 

A first-of-its-kind study to be published in the February issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology has dealt a devastating blow to the notion that men and women are fundamentally different when it comes to how they think and act.

“Although gender differences on average are not under dispute, the idea of consistently and inflexibly gender-typed individuals is,” Bobbi J. Carothers of Washington University in St. Louis and Harry T. Reis of the University of Rochester explained in their study. “That is, there are not two distinct genders, but instead there are linear gradations of variables associated with sex, such as masculinity or intimacy, all of which are continuous.”

Analyzing 122 different characteristics from 13,301 individuals in 13 studies, the researchers concluded that differences between men and women were best seen as dimensional rather than categorical. In other words, the differences between men and women should be viewed as a matter of degree rather than a sign of consistent differences between two distinct groups.

Numerous studies have examined gender differences between men and women. Carothers and Reis were able to find a whopping 3,370 articles on the topic in 2011 alone. The vast majority of the research examined the average differences between men and women. The research can easily be misinterpreted as finding that “Men are better at X” or “Women are worst at Y” — ignoring the fact that the studies are comparing averages and contain variance.

“The world presents us with a huge amount of information, so we often take shortcuts to help process it all (this is known as the ‘cognitive miser’),” Carothers explained to Raw Story in an email. “One of those shortcuts is a tendency to categorize things — it’s easier to think of 2 things (men are one way and women are another) than it is to think of all of the nuances of overlapping distributions, particularly if they’re not brought to our attention when we hear about an average difference.”

Many researchers, particularly those who were “evolutionarily oriented,” appeared to “favor a more categorical interpretation of gender differences,” Carothers and Reis wrote. They speculated this was because no research had actually addressed the specific question of whether gender differences were categorical or dimensional.

If men and women were psychologically distinct from one another, then their scores on psychological measures should form large clusters at either end of a spectrum with little overlap between the two groups.

This is the case for physical characteristics such as height, shoulder breadth, arm circumference, and waist-to-hip ratio. Men tend to be tall, have broad shoulders, large arm circumference, and a small waist-to-hip ratio, while the inverse is true for women. A man is extremely unlikely to be taller than a woman, yet have narrower shoulders, for instance.

Yet the same could not be said for the myriad of psychological characteristics examined by the two researchers, including fear of success, sexual attitudes, mate selection criteria, sexual behaviors, empathy, and personality. A man could be aggressive, but verbally skilled and poor at math, for example, combining stereotypical masculine and feminine traits.

“It’s not enough that men, on average, score higher than women on a scale of masculinity,” Carothers told Raw Story. “Nearly all of the men would have to score higher than nearly all of the women on nearly every item of the scale. We did not see that level of consistency with the psychological variables we had.”

– –
[Man and woman in bed with gender symbols via Shutterstock]

The Father which is not the Son which is not the Spirit which is not the Father is our God with the Son and the Spirit; the Lord is one.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There is something which gets stirred within me at the professing of that Sacred Mystery, every time.

It is the same feeling I have when standing before the amazing architecture of the Library of Congress or reading Shakespeare or simply taking in a beautiful day or taking in a particularly ingenious intellectual argument.

I've always maintained, to some degree (and this is growing as time goes on), that there is very little difference between all these things; this, I would imagine, can be used to bolster an argument for absolute morality.

This has also led to the confusion some have had to how I've viewed being religious and being a secularist as being seamless.

But I don't want to discuss any of those things, things which have either been discussed in detail before here or would require detailed discussion that would escape the point I do want to address.

Rather, read the portion listed below. It'll help me make my point, in my usual round-about way of doing things (also, it contains potentially offensive concepts if you're of more restrained mind about thinking about God).

An excerpt:

Growing up outside the church, I'd drawn my ideas about the Catholic god from Fellini movies as being something like Anita Ekberg driving a red Ferrari. It had never occurred to me to ask the question "Is God fuckable?" because I never doubted the answer. It's one of the reasons I wanted to be Catholic.

When I first started going to Mass, in my thirties, I'd been studying Saint Augustine and was soaked in his language of intense longing for God. I wasn't surprised at all that in one of the first homilies I heard, the priest said he wanted Jesus to be his lover. I didn't realize this was an extraordinary thing for a priest to say. The mystics are always saying stuff like that. Sitting in the pews for a few years, I figured out that when it comes to sex, parish priests more usually offer a mix of awkward shame and romanticism right out of junior high. Mostly, though, it's just not mentioned.

Catholic religious imagery is intense, but after a while, it can become as unremarkable as a pair of slippers. You almost have to be an outsider, a newcomer, or in some sort of crisis to notice it. 

Took me a while to slip into the slippers. Once when I was supposed to lector (read out loud) at daily Mass, I glanced at the reading beforehand and saw it was something about Jerusalem offering her abundant breasts to suck and fondling you on her lap (from Isaiah 66, I think). 
The priest who was due to say Mass that day was a man I wasn't altogether at ease with, and I didn't really want to read this facing him across a small room. 
I said to the guy who set up the daily Masses that I didn't feel comfortable reading this passage. 
He looked at me, absolutely shocked. "But it's scripture," he said. 

I knew he would read it if I insisted, but I thought, OK, fine, lepers or lambs, it's all the same, people don't even hear it. So I read it and the priest stared into space and I stared into space and I could have been reading the Lord's laundry list.

The passion, the body, can get pretty drowsy and domesticated in church, like urgent desire does if you give it warm milk and don't poke it with a stick. Still, it's there if you want it, or if you need it, and if I asked most Catholics I know if God is fuckable, I think I know what they'd say. 
They'd say something like, The world is a sacrament. Take and eat.

Now, the idea of God being "fuckable" is something completely new to me. The author's assurance at how most Catholics would respond to such a question sort of makes me wonder what world they live in and where would one find it.

Yet the questions of sex and, in particular, the religious rituals toward the end do strike a cord.

While I have yet to find the strains of liberal thought I am so certain are within Catholicism (somewhere…), the openness about sex in the context of religious imagery certainly rings true within my knowledge. I once had someone try to tell me that notions of homosexuality in older texts were simply people misreading descriptions of encounters with God because such encounters can take on a seemingly sexual nature (which only serves to reinforce the sacredness of sex and its sacramental component). It's one of the many ways Catholicism seems to gray what is normally taken as strictly black-and-white concepts in religion (though never going nearly as far as some would like and always having an explanation that maintains the traditional viewpoint). It's hard to explain unless you have familiarity with such things (or, seemingly, familiarity with Catholic thought, which is funny to me given my own late blooming that I keep coming back to on this xanga).

But there's something more.

It's that last portion (which is really so beautiful, if understood in its context, that I can barely take it): "They'd say something like, The world is a sacrament. Take and eat."

Someone once told me they couldn't see themselves part of any religious branch which didn't have some notion of the sacraments. I couldn't have understood it then but I have come to. And, for those unfamiliar with the concept of the sacraments, I could give you a description but I don't think it would suffice.

Thus, for now, I shall simply address the sacrament which the passage is clearly alluding to: the Sacrament of the Altar, Holy Communion, the Eucharist (arguably, the focal point about which all of Catholicism circles; without, there is no Catholicism, no Church, no Faith).

For some, this is a concept entirely bereft of familiarity (which, for me, makes it all the more singular and significant).

To make allusion to the Eucharist (the literal embodiment of God offered to us as sustenance, both spiritual and physical) is not simply to say enjoy experience or "take the most out of life". It is to literally make this engagement a holy and spiritual act given to us, again in a spiritual context, by God.

I have continually said that I like that Catholicism takes every experience into consideration in worship: we cross ourselves to engage our touch as we simultaneously speak aloud our belief in the triune God, we use all the visual glory that candles might give a service and incense to reach our scent, etc.

This concept can go into all sorts of fascinating conversations about the state of human nature and its relation to the spiritual, etc. but I don't want to address those here. Rather, in that context, the sacraments take on a more defining conceptualization.

They become a sort of testament of sorts, helping to define the religion. In the ways of symbolism so defining for Catholicism, defining the religion around the Eucharist (for everything that it is from having to physically enact it out to the fact that is the act of eating to the spiritual concept behind its action) sets, tenfold, fundamental concepts about the religion at its very foundation.

Perhaps this is the best (for now) way to describe why we become so impassioned by our sacraments.

And it explains why the recitation of that Sacred Mystery at the top can be such a high to partake in. Were I more of a Protestant, I suppose it'd be the same for reciting John 3:16. Or the love of life without the Spiritual for the Secular Humanist. Or that the Summation of Life is to give Life meaning for the Existentialist.

And the reason the end of that above passage is so great is that it ties these other aspects of life into these defining concepts of the Faith as seamlessly as these definers illuminate the Faith (though the current hierarchy would protest to the fundamentalism I seem to see sex as having, even outside of matrimony).

Anyway (in spite of the difficulty to understand some of the above unless you understand what certain concepts mean and feel like), all of this was to articulate this emotion and the potential reasoning behind it.

And to say that, while I always have this religious-like experience with other religions or religious places (only part of why I was involved in interfaith activities), there is only one other religion (or religion-related to encompass when dealing with intellectualism, thus including my secularism) I have ever had a similar reaction to when encountering the whole of the religion and that is Judaism.

And I'm not really sure what to do with it.

(warning: article deals with the topic of rape, in the event that may be triggering)

Three Words I Said To The Man I Defeated In Gears Of War That I’ll Never Say Again

PATRICIA HERNANDEZ  31 MAY, 2012 1:00 PM

“I raped you.” If words could lynch someone, then this was the moment for it. The post-game scoreboard said I had technically won, so I’d shown them all, right? No, no I hadn’t. The avalanche of trash talk was one thing — you play online enough, you come to expect it — but the laughter, the laughter stripped meaning from my victory. The laughter made me feel like I was shrinking, like I was in danger of disappearing at any moment.

Again.

“I raped you.”

The words weren’t coming from them. No, they were coming from me. Me. The rape survivor. I was the one saying those words, which now hung tremulously in the air after they failed to find a target. Shaking, I got up from my seat and turned the Xbox off.

At one point, those three words were a little girl’s parroting, an attempt to puff my chest and make it seem like I was tough enough to roll with the rowdiest, nastiest of them all. I, too, was one of the boys — see?! It almost seems like the words crept up on me, really — I can’t tell when I started using them, but they quickly became a part of my daily language. I didn’t win things, no, I ‘raped’ them — raped people, too. The phrase became compulsion, knee-jerk.

How did that happen? How did I come to sling that idea, which was of the worst experiences of my life, so nonchalantly at others?

I’ve been raped a number of times, by a number of different people. It was always different, but it was always the same in one important, crucial way. Rape, in my personal experience, was the literal manifestation of a power dynamic. My aggressor was physically assaulting me, yes, but more than that, he was ‘metaphorically’ subjugating me. To rape someone, after all, is to lack respect for someone as a human being enough that consent is no longer necessary.

I know that. And yet…

That match. Something about it made me break. For them, this was just another milking match in Gears of War 3 where one poor sap — that’d be me — decided to brave the odds. My teammates had abandoned me after a lacklustre first round in an attempt to protect their precious K/D ratio. They were convinced that the other team was superior, so it didn’t make sense to waste time with a hopeless match. Might as well take the penalty for leaving a game and go find a match where we stood a chance, instead.

I couldn’t leave though.

For starters, I’m an extremely competitive person — in this ranked gametype, I was one of the top one hundred players in the world. They’d seen that to start off. That was the reason that I became a person of interest, someone to look out for just in case I posed a threat. Once the pre-game banter made it obvious that I was a woman, it was like Sam, my character, now had a bullseye painted across her forehead. A decision was taken: they were going to make an example of me.

Fine. While they were busy homing in on me, going for the kills, I’d go for the objective. This happens all the time regardless of game; while a team is too preoccupied with something stupid, I’d just stay focused, play it straight and win. Whatever.

There’s something ‘special’ about Gears of War, though. When you don’t fully kill someone, they go into a state called ‘Down But Not Out.’ This state is when a character model goes on all fours. Like teabagging in Halo, a new, unintended dynamic arose in multiplayer: players would take downed characters and pretend to rape them.

Playing games can bring the Jekyll out in many of us. Well-mannered, sometimes meek friends in an intense setting will transform into someone else, temporarily. They’ll don an entirely different demeanour, and spit disgusting, vitriolic words with passion, with gusto. The more ridiculous the string of words, the more amusing it could be when you stop to listen to yourself. I mean, most of the time, its ‘harmless’, just a natural spirit that arises from competition.

Or, so I wanted to think. It’s easier to not feel accountable for your actions and words when everyone is doing the same thing, isn’t it?

And me, there was something about my experiences with rape that facilitated the way I acted, too — not that I was aware of it at the time. Here’s my deep dark secret: after the rapes, I felt completely worthless. What the hell did I care anymore? I had already been broken. I didn’t feel like I have a reason to push back against ‘rape culture’ because I wasn’t worth fighting for anymore. Who gives a shit?

So yeah. I “rape” things. What of it? What are you gonna do? That was my attitude. It wasn’t until a friend heard me say it that everything changed.

“I raped everyone.”

I was smiling, but when my friend looked at me like I had just murdered a small child, the smile vanished. Oh.

Oh.

Crap. She was a rape survivor, too, you see. I understood, then. Everything fell into place. Maybe I didn’t feel like I was worth anything, maybe I didn’t value myself anymore, but this friend, she was dear to me. I loved her. I needed to change what I said — if not for myself, for her sake.

Back to that match. As my friends left, it became easier and easier for the other team to gang up on me — and why wouldn’t they? Not only did they want to make me feel less than nothing, I was the only one left. The rest of my team were mindless, aimless computer-controlled AI. Ideally, the match would be entirely against AI, because that made it easier for players to boost points online — the bots are too dumb to provide any resistance. Boosting would help improve their rank, so many players try to make entire teams leave if possible. So this was their attempt to try to make me leave, too. The fact that I wouldn’t just leave made their resolve that much steelier, made them that much bolder.

So there I was, my counter steadily rising as I was winning, but I was almost perpetually surrounded by an entire team of players who decided they’d take every opportunity to pretend to rape me. At first, it didn’t phase me — the rape thing was a normal part of playing Gears online, really. Hell, even I did it (!), sometimes. It’s kind of a part of the ‘culture’, as problematic as it is to say.

Matches didn’t usually take this long, though. The other team was good, and as proficient as I was, there was only one of me. After a couple dozen grating ‘sessions’ of it, I was wearing down. And that wasn’t all; they were sending me messages, too, asking me how I liked it, egging me to leave.

I refused.

Instead of backing down, all the theatrics just made me that much more determined to win. I was going to show them. They weren’t going to get the best of me. And on the chance that they still beat me, I’d walk out feeling like the better ‘man,’ because I stuck it through instead of cutting and running like my friends.

I tried sending messages back to them, to let them know my spirit was still in it. I took every opportunity to perform ‘executions’ on them, which are lavish, indulgent QTE kill sequences. An arm ripped off here, a head golfed off there. I wanted to express my superiority in the ‘right’ way. See, I was trying to be better about the way I carried myself in games. I was in the middle of finding alternatives to the things I said online, and was trying to stop performing the pseudo-rape, too. I wanted to do right by the people I cared about.

One of those players got under my skin, though. The ring leader. Towards the end of the match, all I could feel was anger, but Gears of War can be a frustrating game on its own. It was after he sent me a message of himself cackling, that I snapped. That was it. I found him, cornered him, and, screw it all, I wanted to make it clear to him that he would not hold power over me. I downed him, and instead of mercifully killing him, my character raped his.

That unnerved me. And when I won, I was so disheveled that I wanted my words to feel like lacerations. I wanted my voice to burn them through the headset.

“I raped you. I f**kin’ raped you.”

What I said is troubling, especially because the way I was saying it, I wanted to make it clear the sentiment wasn’t figurative. I wanted them to have some vague semblance of the actual experience: that was just how upset I was. I wanted to make it clear that I had destroyed them, because that’s what rape represented in my mind. Someone destroying someone else.

But they just laughed. It didn’t mean a thing, it wasn’t something that would ‘register’ or even something that could be used against them.

The power dynamic was already set in place before the match even started, and it wasn’t in my favour. Trash talk makes it obvious that the implicit understanding of the language of dominion isn’t just sexualised. It’s gendered. That power struggle is culturally understood to be a man versus woman thing, even though rape doesn’t just happen to women. Most of the slurs of choice point toward the same thing. Someone is a bitch, they’re a faggot — feminine — and if you beat someone, then you raped them. The imagery there for most of us will be the same: a man physically assaulting a woman, not the other way around.

That’s the tragic thing about rape and its surrounding culture. It’s not just that it’s so potent as an image of power dynamics, but that that potency also has the ability to pull even survivors like me into using it against others. It’s not just what I did in Gears of War. There’s plenty of other things that I’ve been guilty of in the past, before I started giving a damn — like slut shaming, like thinking that a woman could ‘ask for it’.

I can’t help but ask myself, then. Who really won that match? Me, who completed the objectives successfully? Or them, who, despite as hard as I tried, made me complicit in the rape culture that has taken so much away from me?